newspaper. The old energy, the familiar faces, now everyone fueled with the adrenaline to catch whoever killed Kristen Gruber. Her name was written in red capital letters on the big white board that tracked the progress of the year’s homicide cases: unsolved. Immediately above it, also in red, was Jeremy Snowden, the cellist. That call early that morning seemed like a lifetime ago. In fact, the board had half a dozen names in red. All unsolved cases. The unit was already stretched.
Still, everyone was eager for a piece of this case. It was a murdered cop and, thanks to the television show, also a dead celebrity. Will went through the same briefing he had given the commanders before their press conference. Much was being held back, including that Gruber’s purse or wallet, cell phone, badge, and gun were not on the boat. Her keys were missing. The divers brought out sonar to search the river bottom for the firearm. Her clothes were aboard, neatly folded, but her panties were missing.
“Maybe a trophy taker,” Slamowitz theorized, picking his teeth as usual.
“Maybe she didn’t wear panties.” This from Kovach, who was one year from retirement and smiling for the first time Will could remember.
Fassbinder told LeAnn Skeen, the only woman in the unit, to be on the first morning flight to Myrtle Beach to interview the parents. Will knew he was reasoning, from experience, that a female detective would be better at coaxing information out of a grieving mother and father.
“Take your bikini,” Dodds said.
“I’d use one of yours, J.C., but your man-boobs are too big,” she said.
“Meet me at the Hustler store, baby.” He smiled lasciviously.
“Stop it, children,” Fassbinder said, “or I’m going to have a sexual harassment claim on my hands, probably filed by Dodds.”
“Always keeping the black man down,” Dodds said in mock severity.
For these minutes the unit had the snug feel of the old days. Amazingly, his old desk across from Dodds was empty, too, as if waiting for him. Dodds still had the homey needlepoint sign on the cluttered desktop that said, “Our Day Begins When Your Days End.” But everything had changed. Will had spent ten years in this office and now he felt like a stranger. He was off homicide and his real desk was over at headquarters. And even though he had received a round of applause when he walked in tonight, his first appearance there since getting out of the hospital, he knew they no longer really considered him one of them. He was the PIO, the guy on television, the one who walked with a cane. He sensed that at least some of his former colleagues wondered why the hell he was the lead on this case. He wondered the same thing. But he had cleared too many murders for this to be anything but an awareness leavened deep in the collective consciousness of a group used to working together.